Chimney Sit

To Nipponese newsgatherers, the most important man in Tokyo last week was not Prime Minister Yuko ("Shishi") Hamaguchi, making a remarkable recovery from an assassin's bullet fired fortnight ago (TIME, Nov. 24), but kinetic little Kiyoshi Tanabe, resolutely sitting on a factory smokestack.

Early in the week a mill near Tokyo's railway station closed down because of the general business depression, threw hundreds of factory hands out of work. Kiyoshi Tanabe, a railway flagman employed at the plant, ate a large meal, drank quantities of water, then kilting his short cotton jacket about him swarmed up the silent factory chimney and sat on the top vowing that he would never come down till his fellow workmen were re-engaged.

All one day and the next he sat there, with the banzais of the unemployed rising faintly to his ears. Police and factory owners paid little attention. From Yokohama came a message: Emperor Hirohito would return to Tokyo at the week's end, would almost certainly pass the Tanabe-topped chimney on his way to the palace. Instantly the removal of Chimney Sitter Tanabe became of vital importance. The Emperor of Japan is accounted divine, the Son of Heaven. For any one to look down on him is not only a crime but, worse than that, a sacrilege.

Police shouted threats through megaphones. Kiyoshi sat on his chimney. Friends attempted to hoist food to him by kites and the police cut the string. Kiyoshi sat on his chimney. Police threatened to light a fire under the chimney. Kiyoshi gritted his teeth and continued to sit on his chimney. Police sent up a tasty fish stew, flavored with sleep-inducing drugs in the hope that the famished Kiyoshi would partake of it, fall off. Finally the owners of the factory, realizing that for the honor of Tokyo Kiyoshi must come down, agreed to reinstate the discharged workmen. Police screamed the news through megaphones. Stiffly victorious Kiyoshi Tanabe climbed down, his mouth parched white with thirst. Correspondents noted that he had been aloft exactly 129 hours, Japan's all-time chimney-sitting record.

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